Sic Semper Tyrannis
by SkyKid
Summary: The Avatar has gone mad. With his overwhelming power, he conquered the world and ruled it for over 200 years. But mankind hasn't given up yet, for a maimed young man and a small rebellion emerge from the mist of despair.
1. Chapter 1

_"Do you regret?" my friends often used to ask me. I never really understood what exactly they were talking about. Regret being the Avatar? Or the path I chose? Regret the choices I've made for the sake of my quest? Or simply my whole life? I never asked them. And now, they're all dead._

The silence woke me up. Judging by the coldness, the night was still pretty young and, around me, all of the Spares were already soundly asleep. But something was wrong. I pushed Nail who was clinging to me in his sleep aside and got up. Silently, being careful not to step on the others, I started making my way to the outer-mine when a voice suddenly whispered.

"You've noticed it too."

Startled, I turned around in a scared jump and nearly stepped on Broom.

"Spade!" I complained in half a whisper. He was sitting in the darkest corner of the room, his back leaning on the wall behind him while his younger sister, Chisel, was sleeping with her head on his lap. Despite the shadows, I could clearly see the glowing white of his grin. Then, slowly and gently, he moved Chisel's head to a pile of rounded up clothes, got up and suddenly leaped across all of the sleeping bodies, flew over my head and smoothly landed right behind me.

"What is it, Anvy? Afraid of the dark?"

"You should really stop airbending before you get caught," I warned him, ignoring his tease. But, as carefree as usual, he just winked at me and pointed to the room's exit with a small head motion.

"Let's go and find out the reason for this silence, shall we?" Without waiting for my answer, Spade hurried out, convinced that I would follow him. And he was right. Something was definitely wrong and I was definitely curious. The night Spares should have been working in the mine right now and there was no way the Skinners would let them take a break. This silence was worrying. And exciting. Quick and soft on my feet, I followed Spade's path and caught up with him. We crossed aisle D without a sound and reached the stairs leading into the mine where my companion signaled me to stop and to crouch. Dug in a round shape, the mine was large of about thirty feet and deeper than I could see. Around it, at each quarter, at approximately ten feet under the surface, four aisles dug horizontally led to resting areas for the spares where they could sleep. Above us, the mighty metal grid closing the mine was cutting the moonlight into squares. Openable only by the Inquisitors, the Metal Masters, it thwarted anyone from just the hope of escaping. In front of me, carefully, Spade stretched his head to look down into the deepness and quickly pulled it back.

"What did you see?" I impatiently asked.

"Darkness," he replied, somehow tenser than usual. "There should be plenty of activity down there, so why – down!" Swiftly, Spade tackled me on the ground and slapped the air, creating a gust of wind that put out the nearest torch lighting us. A moment later, two men emerged from aisle A, the one at the opposite side of us. Both surprisingly tall and in black robes, they seemed to be discussing serious matters, judging by the intense intonations I managed to hear.

"Anvy," Spade whispered in a serious tone not like him at all. "Go back to the room and pretend to sleep."

"What about you?"

"I'll be right behind you. I just need to understand what those guys are doing here."

I nodded, trusting Spade's judgement like always. At the other side, the two men had stopped at the top of the stairs and seemed to be having an argument. As stealthily as possible, I got up and silently headed back to the resting room. When I got far enough to be sure they couldn't see nor hear me, I ran as fast as I could, not exactly knowing what I was afraid of. When I got to the entrance of the room, someone suddenly came out of it and, unable to stop in time, I bumped into Chisel, repelling the both of us in opposite directions.

"Anvil!" cried out the girl while rubbing her elbow that had hit the ground. Chisel was two solstices younger than me and her short height and light weight made it seem like I had bumped into a child. However, despite her frail appearance and her usual gentle self, she could be a real tornado if sufficiently prompted, just like her older brother, which she seemed to inspire herself from.

"Chisel! Are you alright? What were you doing here?" I asked while helping her getting up.

"Where's my brother?" she replied, ignoring my questions.

"He'll be right there," I answered, doubting it myself. "But you need to go back to sleep. His words."

She stared at me for a while and for a moment I thought that she would push me aside to go out, but she sighed and went back to her corner where she laid down. Quietly, I did the same at my own place, between Nail and Saw, I slowly fell into a deep slumber, confident that Spade would come back before dawn.

But he didn't. When the Skinners came to wake us up, I knew something went wrong by the violence they displayed. With kicks and stick hits, they made us cross the aisle at an immense pace and told us to line up in front of the stairs leading into the deep hole. Dazed, we all tried to figure out why we were being beat up by looking down the mine, but one of the Skinners suddenly shouted out to look up. Next to me, File let out a muffled cry, which earned her a wallop on her back with a stick. Above us, Spade was hanging by his feet to the metal grid with a small gesture of back and forth. Completely naked, I could see several severe bruises and botches on his body covered in dried blood. Unable to bear the sight, I looked down.

" _This_ is what happens when one of you suddenly decide to take a night stroll!" shouted out a Skinner. "Now, we know one of you was with the fellow up there last night." I shivered. "I'll give him or her one chance to speak up."

Panicked, I tried to look as calm as possible, but my sweat and the fear on my face should have given me away to anyone who would look close enough. At first, no one came, so I began to feel relieved, but then a Skinner suddenly took Chisel by the collar of her ragged cloth and lifted her above the void of the mine.

"Time's up," he said with a smile.

"WAIT!" I cried out, terrified. "It was me! I was with him last night!" The Skinner looked at me and his smile widened. Casually, but with brute strength, he threw the small girl against the wall behind him and came to me, who was kneeling and looking down in fear.

"Good lad," he said in enjoyment. I looked up, but his foot suddenly rose and hit me under my chin, sending me backwards. As my consciousness faded away, I saw the faces of my fellow spares doing their best at looking away, pity covering their faces.

 _When I started my Avatar training, as a child, people used to say that I was the greatest prodigy they had ever heard of. Thus, when I achieved metal bending without any effort, nobody was even slightly surprised. Then, at the age of ten, I managed to lightningbend better than most, but still, everybody thought of it as 'something to be expected'. It's only when, some years later, I mastered lavabending that the people actually reacted. But that's also when the conflicts began to arise._

Coughing blood, which somehow fell on my forehead, woke me up. Disoriented, my head felt like exploding and my body ached more than it ever had.

"Still alive, Anvy?"

Still dizzy, I couldn't determine where the voice came from, but I knew from 'whom' it came.

"Spade!" I meant to say it out loud, but my voice was so weak and my throat so dry that it came out as a whisper. "You're alive!"

He chuckled. "More alive than 'you' are at the moment, mate."

"I was so afraid you'd be dead. I shouldn't have left you last night."

"Last night? Anvy, that was three nights ago. What do you remember?"

I didn't want to answer. "I remember... being hurt. Over and over. I don't know for how long..." My voice died out as I recalled the small dream-like memories I had of the past few days.

"Well," started Spade with a mix of anger and pity in his voice, "they hanged you up here last night, so they must have...'kept' you for about two days."

"Two days... No wonder my body hurt so much," I said trying to figure out the extant of my injuries. I tried to look up at my body, my vision was still completely blurred. "How bad is it, Spade? I'm so dizzy from the pain I can't see a thing."

For a moment, from his silence, I thought he was gone, but then he sighed. It wasn't a sigh of boredom, annoyance nor of disappointment. It was a sigh of resignation.

"I'm sorry, Anvil. I'm so sorry," he said, his voice shaking. "Your dizziness isn't what's blinding you... They took them away. They took your eyes."

Sometimes, there are moments where I wonder what my life would have been if I had never been caught and sent to this living hell. If my parents hadn't been killed, trying to protect me, to no avail. If I hadn't met Spade, the incredible spares' natural leader. In those moments, I wished really hard for my past sixteen solstices to only be a bad dream and to soon wake up in the arms of my mother. But this wasn't one of those moments. Right now, I only wished I had died back then. Slowly, with my right hand missing three nails, I reached for my eyes. They were still there, but both were crossed by a vertical scar.

"Don't, touch them," said Spade in a voice full of pity. "They're not cicatrized yet."

I would have cried, if my tears weren't so painful, so instead, I faced the obvious and simply sighed. "I'm going to die, right? Even if I survive until they unhook us, I won't be able to work at the mine without my eyes. And if I can't work..." My voice died.

"Anvy! Listen to me. You 'will not' die. We will help you. You can count on all of us, we'll share your part of the work and let you do the small tasks. As long as the job is done, the Skinners will leave you alone." Barely listening, I closed my blind eyes and let myself slip into unconsciousness. "I'm going to make things right, Anvy. I'll save you all, I swear."

 _Nations wars, civil wars, bending wars, the whole world was a battleground. At first, every side tried to add me, the most powerful being of this realm, to their cause. As the Avatar, my only goal was to bring balance back to the world by stopping those ridiculous wars. To do that, I tried for many years to stay neutral and to act as a mediator. But the world didn't like that, so it tried to get rid of me. At first, some factions sent small groups of mercenaries to dispose of me. It goes without saying that they stood no chance at all. Then they sent experimented benders, which, again, failed miserably. Desperate, they soon begun sending troupes, then armies, but each victory against those enemies only served to make me stronger and stronger._

Slowly, I tried to get up, but only managed to sit. My body was in so much pain that a constant shaking was going through it. I vaguely remembered being unhook of the metal grid at the same time as Spade and then being threw here were the other spares tried to take care of me as much as they could. I tried to open my eyes to look around me, but then I remembered.

"Anvy," said a soft and sad voice that I recognized as Needle's. "Welcome back." I opened my mouth to answer her, but she delicately put a finger on it before I could. "Don't speak. Have some water." I felt something hard against my lips and opened them to feel the liquid enter my mouth. Its feeling was exhilarating. I closed my eyes while I drank, enjoying the water flowing through my throat and silently thanking Needle. Being the older woman and despite having only three solstices more than me and most of the other spares, Needle was the motherly figure of the group. Incredibly kind, but also able to being strict when she had to, she and Spade were the natural leaders everyone followed instinctively. Except that this instinct cost me my eyes.

The fact that Needle was here meant that the sun should have been set, and the shivers that the cold gave me confirmed it. Around us, I could hear the voices of my fellow Spares. As soon as I finished drinking, Nail spoke behind me.

"I brought you some clean clothes." His voice was trying to be reassuring, but I could clearly hear all of his concern in it. "Well, they're not exactly clean, but they're the closest thing to it that I could find."

"It's fine," answered Needle gently. "Thank you Nail." I felt the clothes changing hands near my left ear, heard the sound of splashing water and concluded that the clothes were being wetted. Then, like a knife suddenly stabbing me, an intense cold pain at my abdomen made me jump and scream. "I'm sorry!" quickly apologized Needle. "I forgot that you couldn't..." Her voice died before she could finish her sentence. "I need to clean your wounds, Anvil. It may hurt a bit at first," she said as the pain suddenly returned. Gritting my teeth and closing my eyes as hard as I could, I tried my best to endure the pain, but I must have fainted, because when I realized the pain was gone, so was Needle. Instead, Chisel's voice welcomed me.

"Hey, Anvil," she said, sounding weary, but also compassionate. "Sorry about your eyes." Ever so frank. "Spade's fine. He recovered at Godspeed. But he's feeling guilty for bringing you with him that night. And he's damn right. I smacked him good earlier." Speaking in short sentences, Chisel's voice was flat and from the way the sound came to my ears, I reckoned that she wasn't looking at me while doing so.

"Don't blame him," I managed to articulate in a weak and shaky voice. "I make my own choices."

She snorted in disdain. "You wouldn't think so if you saw your own body," she answered, probably not realizing how that sentence hurt. "Here. Can you feel where I'm touching you?"

"I can't," I replied, trying to understand her point.

"Exactly. That's because I'm touching where your left little finger used to be. Except it's not there anymore."

Apprehensive, I tried to concentrate on the said finger and to move it, but it was indeed gone. I closed my blinded eyes and my mind cried "why" while my body simply sighed.

"Why did they bothered keeping me alive?"

I had asked this mostly for myself, but Chisel answered anyway. "Because they needed to make an example out of you. Spade would have been too hard to break, so they chose the weaker one." Her frankness amused me more than it actually hurt me. "Anyway, you better sleep now. Dawn is near and you need to be able to get up until then. We already decided how we'll share your part of the work, but you still need to do small tasks. Ham will stay near you most of the time to guide you." I felt relieved at Hammer's mention. The man was the strongest, biggest but more importantly the gentlest Spare of this group. I knew I could rely on him.

"Thank you, Chisel," I said. For a while, she kept silent and I could imagine the startled expression on her face.

After a while, she finally sighed. "I haven't really done anything. In fact, I should be the one thanking you. If you hadn't speak up that time, my body would have been crushed on the mine's ground." As she spoke, I felt Chisel standing up and then heard her going away when she finished. I tried one last time to open my eyes only to find the dark reality smiling at me. I settled on sleeping.

 _At that time, I still had friends and family to support me, but inevitably, they became targets used to get at me. Confident in my skills, I trusted myself into being able to protect them. However, reality got the better of me when one of my closest friend murdered my younger sister and her lover, my best friend, during a night. The very next morning, maddened by rage, I charged alone straight into the responsible faction's settlement and annihilated everyone without mercy, discovering in the process a new skill: bloodbending. I had heard before that the ability could be use without the full moon, but I never witnessed it, until I did it myself. Such power in my hands! In the Avatar State, I could literally and easily kill hundreds of people simultaneously only by snapping fingers. Thoughtful of how to use this newly acquired power, I returned to my family's hiding._

"Anvil! Wake up! Come on!" The voice hurrying me to wake up was deep and stressed out. I recognized Hammer's tone and the way he firmly pulled my arm to stand me up with incredible ease confirmed it.

"What is it, Ham?" I asked, confused by his restlessness.

"Don't speak!" he whispered while forcing me to walk somewhere. "Kneel." I did as he asked, worried by his unusual behavior. My body still hurt but following Hammer demonstrated that I could at least walk, despite the pain it gave me. I was about to ask again what was going on, but the complete silence of the room advised me otherwise. Cursing my blind eyes, I resigned myself to wait for development and started listening to my surroundings, something I had done a lot lately, and that I will probably be doing a lot more in the future – if a future there was.

To my right, I could hear a mixture of anxious breathing and quiet sobbing, most probably coming from the other Spares, all kneeling in line. From previous experience, I reckoned that we were lined up at the deep end of the room, our back facing the wall and our front the entrance, so I focused my hearing in front of me. First, I heard footsteps, then whispering.

"Which one?" said an imperious and sharp voice.

"The one smiling arrogantly, sir," replied another in a submissive tone.

"Bring him forward," ordered the first voice. As soon as the order was given, heavy footsteps of at least three men came near me. Then, I heard them grab someone who struggled slightly before giving up with a resigned sigh. The men that I suspected to be Skinners dragged their victim where I previously heard the voice of the one ordering the others.

"Greetings, boy," he started in a vicious tone. "I've been told that you are quite the sleepwalker, is that right?" A silence told me that he was waiting for an answer that never came. He snorted. "Playing tough won't help your case, Spare," he went on, insisting on the last word. "You're going to tell me about the men you've encountered that night, and you're going to tell me about it _now._ Silence. Again, the man snorted. "You think we can't break you? You're probably right. I know the face of someone who would die from pain rather than giving away his secrets. But what about them?"

I understood that he was talking about us when some footsteps approached us. Then, I felt something moving, but didn't even had time to wonder about it, as the foot of a Skinner sank into my stomach where one of my previous wound was still healing, and propelled me against the wall behind, stunning me as I barely remained conscious. Breathtaking, the hit made me cough and spit blood as I desperately tried to stay awake.

"No! Damn you!" Spade's voice was like a distant whisper in my ears.

"Restrain it," calmly said the man, talking about my friend who, by the sound of it, had started fighting with airbending.

"Hang in there, Anvy," whispered Ham before I succumbed to the peaceful slumber calling me.

 _They were dead. All of them. My old mother, my twin cousins, Vin, Alek, Tooru, Salim, Hutah, everybody. All gone. Yet, this time, I did not burst in rage like I did before. In fact, I couldn't feel anything. I was calm. All of the people I loved were dead, yet I was looking at their body like they were nothing. No more. Silently, I headed into the night, burned the hideout, sat on the ground and meditated. I don't know how many hours, days or weeks I spent there, but when I opened my eyes again, I had discovered two things. The first was my goal: to bring balance back to the world. Well, in fact, I already knew that, but now I understood how to achieve it. The second: weightlessness. I had heard of only two men who ever got this ability, but there was no time for amazement nor to understand how I acquired it, so I took off into the sky._

The earth shook. Slowly, I sat up and examined the extant of my injuries. The kick that knocked me out didn't reopened the wound on my stomach, but the feeling it gave me was that of a burning rock pressing against my skin. The earth shook again. Having no idea about my current location, I tried to call out someone, but the only answer I got was the echo of my own voice. Then, for the third time, the earth shook, but this time I heard the sound of rock cracking above me. Before I could react, the tremendous shock of a boulder crashing just next to me resounded. A bit farther, the same thing occurred again. The mine was collapsing. This would have been wonderful news if only I wasn't alone and blind amidst falling boulders that could crush me at any moment. Suddenly, I heard footsteps behind me.

"Spade!" I rejoiced.

The footsteps stopped and there was a silence for an instant. "How did you know it was me?" asked my friend, confused.

How did I knew? "I... I didn't," I answered. "Just a guess."

"Anyway, let's go!" he said while pulling my arm and standing me up. "We need to get out of here."

"What in the world is happening?" I asked as I followed his lead as fast as I could.

"Later."

For a while, he lead me across the collapsing mine, making me stride over rocks, pass under boulders and turn this or that way. As I ran, my body began to regain some of its vigor, and something inside me somehow seemed to roughly discern my surrounding without actually seeing it. I gained some confidence and sped up. But I shouldn't have. As soon as I did, I stumbled over a rock and heavily fell on the hard ground, bringing Spade who was holding my arm with me. Before I could get up, the latter grabbed me under the arms and tossed me away as far as he could, just before a rock fell where I was a second ago. Then, a moan confirmed what I had feared.

"Spade!" I cried while blindly hurrying to where I heard him.

"Don't stop," he said in a voice full of pain. When I reached him by following his voice, he violently repelled me. "Listen to me, Anvil. You're almost there, just run straight ahead and you'll be outside. All the others will be waiting for you. A guy named Jin should also be there. You can trust him; you must trust him."

"What about you?" I said in a desolate voice, already knowing the answer.

"My legs are crushed. I'm done for, but you are not! The celling is collapsing, Anvil. Go now - GO!"

I ran. Ignoring the pain of my body and my mind calling me a coward, I ran. As fast as I could, in a straight line, I ran. wailing and crying, I ran. Without turning back when the sound of the rocks collapsing on the body of my friend reached my ears, I ran. I ran. Until someone suddenly stopped me.

"Easy, son," said the voice of the man who just caught me. It was the warmest and softest voice I ever heard. "You're fine now. Where is the other?" I didn't answer. "I see. I'm sorry. My name is Jin. We'll take care of you now."

"Where are the others?" I asked, still dazed by Spade's death.

He sighed. "I'm sorry. You two were the only ones left."

My head got dizzy and my wounds and botches suddenly felt much more painful. "No... But he said..." I fell on my knees, realizing that Spade had lied to me so that I could escape. I lost them all. I lost everything I loved in this life and gained what in return? The beauty of the outside world I always dreamt about. Except I couldn't see it anymore. I was now in a place darker than the deepest part of the mine. All of this because of the will of one single man. The one who controlled everything. As the sun shone its light on my back once again since what had seem to be an eternity, I knew that I had found my path.

Because that day was the day I vowed revenge.

That day, was the day I swore to kill _The Avatar_.

 _The first part of my plan was simple, but needed time. The world needed to be reminded of who I was. I was the Avatar. The greatest of them all. With a stamp, I could destroy entire cities. With a stretch of my arm, I could make lightning rain on the world. With a breath, I could create rabid tornadoes ravaging the earth. And with a snap of my fingers, I could pull the blood out of every one who dare go against me. After many years intimidating the world, I could finally begin the second part of my plan. Using fear and respect, I gathered the strongest warriors, the smartest strategists & tacticians and the finest leaders and build myself an army. And it took decades, during which I've done things that would make the toughest men tremble in fear and lost things that would have drive any other man mad, but I finally did it. Today, as I walk in the ruins of New Republic City, I realize that I've finally achieved my goal._

 _Because today is the day I brought balance back._

 _Today is the day I conquered the world._


	2. Chapter 2

_"You have to think large. Don't let the obvious blind you." When I was a kid, my father used to tell me those words at the end of each lesson. I wonder if he would have approved the path I chose. I am not proud of everything I did, but everything I did, I did it without regrets. When New Republic City fell and I founded Empire City on its ruin, I thought that the world would finally have settled down and learned to live in peace as one and unique nation. Alas, twenty years later, some people are still bringing chaos to the world by claiming their rights to freedom. But I know what freedom grants. It grants conflict. And conflict lead to destruction. I have no choice. If they can't live as one with us, then they shouldn't live at all._

You only realize that something is important once you've lost it. I learned that ten years ago when my parents were brutally murdered by soldiers of the Empire. After losing them, as if it wasn't enough and instead of just killing me, those savages took something else from me; my freedom. They tried to break me, to make me lose hope. But they couldn't, because I met people in the hell they brought me to. People like me; friends. A new family. Together, we lived our lives of servitude, moment by moment, hoping that someday, maybe, we would be free again. And that day came. But, by now, I've come to realize that life never grants you something without taking something else in return. When I lost my family and my freedom, life gave me new siblings and a powerful emotion; hope. When I lost my eyes, it gave me a new power. But when freedom came to me once again, life took back what it gave me before. Until recently, I used to think that it was only the natural order of how things worked, but now I'm beginning to suspect something else. _Someone_ else. The one who made the world how it is; _The Avatar_. I mean, isn't _He_ like a god? _He_ lived and ruled this realm for over two-hundred years, turning _His_ every will into reality. Shouldn't _He_ be able to decide the course of History? I guess I'm starting to become a bit irrational. Beside, there's no way the rebellion would still exist if _He_ was truly omnipotent.

It has been three years since I joined them. Jin, the leader of the Revolutionaries – that's how they called themselves – brought me back with him after the destruction of the mine. With some other men, we traveled in some sort of vehicle for at least a whole day until we reached their hideout. I couldn't see anything, but I knew from having spent the last eight years in a mine that we were in a huge underground settlement. There, Jin gathered an unexpectedly huge crowd and explained that "the expedition to free the Carol mine went terribly bad and that a blind boy was all they managed to save". As "the blind boy", I was still shocked by the brutal change my life once again underwent and was barely even conscious of what was happening around me. At first, they all pitied me for my maimed body and crippled mind, and Jin seemed to agree as he stated that, from now on, I was to be under the protection of the Revolutionaries and that I should be treated with cared and compassion. As I heard those words, something kicked in inside of me. I had made a vow. I soon disillusioned them by stepping forward and speaking up with the most confident voice I could managed.

"I don't need your protection, I don't need you taking care of me, I don't need your compassion and I certainly don't need your pity! All I want is to fight."

Some laughed, some felt even sorrier and behind me Jin sighed, but no one took me seriously. In fact, my intervention only created a hubbub that echoed between the walls of the cave we were in, confirming its vastness. I heard Jin stepping forward, probably preparing to bring silence back to his audience, but before he could do so, the sound a chair scraping the hard ground resounded, making everyone suddenly go silent. Then, heavy footsteps made their way through the crowd and stopped right before me.

"Come with me," said the hoarse and hard voice of a man. It wasn't a request nor an invitation; it was an order. The man then continued his way past me and Jin, walking away from the crowd. At first, the voice surprised me by its imperious tone and I was left frozen in place. But then, almost as if his voice had bound me to obey, I followed the sounds of his feet, maintaining a fair distance between us. We walked for quite a while in silence in what seemed like a maze until the strange man stopped and turned to face me. I felt his gaze on me for some time before he finally snorted.

"You're quite confident, aren't you?" His old, yet powerful voice was even more intimidating than before, but I tried not to seem faze by it.

"I am. I want to fight." He snorted again with even more disdain.

"I'm not talking about the silly declaration you made back there. I'm talking about how you followed me through the galleries. You're not even putting your hands before you to avoid obstacles. You sure you're not just pretending to be blind so that we feel sorry for you?"

Baffled, I tried to understand his point. Walking as I was now wasn't that much different than walking in the deepest part of the mine. I always had known how to navigate in the dark by instincts and the recent loss of my eyes only sharpened them. I used to think that the awareness I had of my surrounding was only due to my sharp senses, but now that my sight was gone, it was actually surprising to find out that I had relied on that "sixth sense" most of my life without ever realizing it. But I wasn't going to let that old man know that.

"I'm sharp," I began to answer arrogantly. "What would you know, anyway?" I tried to sound convincing, but it was the first time I ever used such a tone, so I tried to think of what Spade would have said and used his words.

"What would I know?" His voice had the spark of someone accepting a challenge he was sure to win. "Let me see... Your left little finger is missing as are the nails of your thumbs and middle fingers. You have three broken toes, two on the right foot and one on the left one. Your legs and your arms are lacerated from small knife cuts and three of your ribs are broken. On your abdomen, a big wound which goes from your left hip to your right pectoral has recently been reopened. You're terribly light and quite short, probably due to malnutrition."

I kept silence. I could understand how he would know about external injuries like my fingers, but the way he described every single wounds on my body was quite disturbing.

"One more thing," he added, "you're not the only one to be blind here."

"Are you mocking me?" I asked sharply, even though I somehow knew he wasn't.

"Seismic sight. An advanced earthbending skill derived from the lesser effective seismic sense, an ability that you seem to genuinely possess and use, though imperfectly. You must have realized it by now. When you still had your eyes, you may not have thought much about your ability to perceive things, but now that you feel and recognize them without actually seeing them, you're beginning to grasp the full extent of your abilities. And I must say, I'm impressed. Very few have shown to be able to use seismic sense subconsciously and even less while still having their eyesight."

At this point, while I listened speechlessly to this old man, Jin came toward us from behind me. "See? You sensed him didn't you?" said the old man in a mocking voice. "You turned you head while he was still out of reach from your ears. Come and find me tomorrow if you want to know more." The man then walked toward a wall and struck it. I... felt it opening and then closing after the man entered the hole. He was right. I somehow "sensed" my surrounding and it was becoming more and more accurate since the loss of my eyes.

"Did you talked with Shiryoku?" asked Jin's voice, suddenly pulling me out of my thoughts. It was everything the old man's voice wasn't; soft, warm, friendly and gentle. It reminded me of Spade's.

"I did," I answered, reckoning that "Shiryoku" was the name of the old man. The tone I used made him laugh, as he was probably aware of how it went.

"Anyway, come with me, kid," he then added. "I'll show you to your quarters. You'll have to share a room with someone else, but it's better than nothing." I followed him in silence, still mulling over my conversation with the old man named Shiryoku. Me an earthbender? How could I have lived all my life until now without ever finding out about it? "So," said Jin in an anxious, tense voice, interrupting my thoughts. "Aren't you going to ask me what happened back there? At the Carol mine?"

Carol mine. Quite a pretty name for such a hellish place. "I know what happened. My friends – no, my family died that night. And your attempt to "free" the mine was probably what caused their death. But I won't blame you or your people. I blame the Empire. I blame the _Avatar_."

"Those aren't quite the words I expected from the boy who cried endless flows of tears on our way back from the mine," replied the man in a voice filled with far less pity and much more respect.

"Yeah, well, I'm done crying. I've made up my mind on what I have to do and I may just have found a mean to it," I said, now completely determined to learn more about my power from the old Shiryoku.

Jin had a small laugh of satisfaction. "Then I look forward to see the contribution you'll bring to our crusade. But as you are now, I can't let you fight among us, kid. For the time being, here's your room. I suggest that you take some rest. I'll take my leave, now. From what I understood, I reckon that you don't exactly need any help to settle down." He began to go away, leaving me in front of my room, consisting, from what I could sense, of two beds and one wardrobe. "And one more thing, kid," he added as he walked away. "If you really plan on training under Shiryoku, you better be well prepared. If your resolution isn't strong enough, he'll break you."

 _Am I thinking large? Stopping tyrants and dictators used to be the role of the Avatar since its creation. You might say, I've been doing this all my lives. And despite centuries of efforts, humanity was still as foolish as ever. So I had to think of something else. Now the tyrant is me. When my quest to unify the world began, everything seemed so clear to me. Now that feels like ages ago. Why does mankind constantly seek conflict? I had thought that fear and respect could control them, but all it needs to light the fire of rebellion is a little spark. A spark called "hope". A spark that used to be me. How can I crush it?_

One thing I learned from training with master Shiryoku is that a fight is never won until your opponent stop breathing. It was a simple, obvious and fundamental teaching. Yet I was about to disrespect it. To be where I was, I had to overcome many hardship and suffering, spent countless nights without sleep, endure lots of wounds and broken bones, but I persevered and I was finally where I always wished to be. On the front lines. Lying before me, chocking in his own blood, was the very first Imperial that I defeated.

"It's okay," I gently said near his ear as I crouched beside him. "Your wound isn't lethal."

Sore loser, he suddenly pulled out a small knife hidden in his belt and tried to stab me. I effortlessly intercepted his move with my right hand and firmly twisted his wrist to make him let go of the knife which I swiftly grabbed to stab him with it in the leg. He screamed and I frowned. I know he was my enemy, but hearing screams of pain reminded me of bad days. The scars on my eyes itched.

"A surprise attack won't work on me. Don't worry, I won't kill you. I need you to deliver a message for me. A message to the _Avatar_." I didn't know if what I was doing was dangerous or not, or if the message would even reach someone, but I didn't care. "I want you to tell him that his days of tyranny have come to an end. That today is the day humanity gets back on its feet and start fighting back. That he may think he's some sort of god, but that we all know better. We know that he's just a man who thinks he can play with the lives of others, with their emotions, just because he has power. But just because he has more power than every single living man doesn't mean that he's more powerful than all of them together. Today is the day mankind starts claiming its rights back. The day that the king becomes the prey. How fast can he run?"


	3. Chapter 3

_I often ask myself what will happen of the Empire when I die. I have a wife, but no heir and even if I had one, nobody could possibly bear the burden of my responsibilities. Without my power as the Avatar, I would have been dead for decades now. But when I do die, the world would probably go back as it was before; chaotic. Every single opportunist would attempt to seize power and the war to leadership would bring the fall of the Empire. The fall of peace. Of balance. The next Avatar, even if he or she had the potential to replace me, would probably be hated from birth and killed as soon as his or her power would be exposed. No. There is no one else to prevent the fall of balance if I were to die. This means that I can't let that happen. That I can't die. I shall live until someone can replace me. Until I can finally rest in peace. May the ending come, my work will be done._

I stepped over the dead Skinner's body that Hikari, my Companion, had just slaughtered before disappearing once again. As an airbender, she was one of the few that were able to move around practically invisible to my seismic sight, though I didn't know if she was actually doing it on purpose. As Companions, we were supposed to act together as a pair, coordinating or efforts to produce the most efficient results on the field. However, since Jin put us together and despite my numerous attempt to communicate, the girl never once spoke to me. That wouldn't be much of a problem with me if she actually did teamwork, but as soon as she has the chance, she runs off on her own, leaving a trail of bodies on her path. And it wasn't pretty. Being blind, I couldn't actually see the corpse of everyone she killed, but my seismic sight gave me more than enough details to know that she wasn't looking for clean death for her victims. I killed before myself, but never with such savagery. Which was strange, considering the state of anger I was in every time I stepped in a mine and the usual lack of emotion that she seemed to harbor.

After deciding that I should have a talk with Jin on this matter, I put my thoughts about Hikari aside and focused on my mission; rescue as much people as I could. I might not have my Companion's drive in the killing aspect, but freeing slaves was something that mattered to me. Slowly, I closed my blind eyes and expended my seismic sight. Just like seismic sense, this ability relied on the vibrations of the earth to perceive the surrounding of its user. However, to increase the amount of details and the precision of the perception, the user must rely on earthbending to vibrate the earth around him at an imperceptible frequency, thus sending his own vibrations around him, amplifying the earth's ones. The higher the frequency, the farther one could "see", but it also caused the sent vibrations to interfere with the received ones, thus decreasing the precision.

Hikari was out of my range, but, to my left, three rooms away, a group of five young people were hiding, hunched in a corner. A hurried there, creating shortcuts by opening holes in the earth walls. As soon as I entered the room with the five kids, one of them charged towards me with a knife, screaming in a high pitched voice with his eyes closed. I stepped aside, leaving my leg on which the boy tripped and fell over. In the corner, two of the kids were crying, one was begging of me to let them live and the other was simply staring at me. I sighed. Such sadness this world had created. Slowly, trying not to scare them, I went near a wall, took a firm stance and fiercely stroke it with both of my palms, thus creating a stairway leading all the way to the surface not so far above us.

"Go up this way," I said to them. "There will be people there. Good guys. You can trust them. You must thrust them." Those words echoed in me with sorrow. In a head shake, I chased Spade away from my mind and began walking away from the stairway after making sure the kids went up, but suddenly stopped. The one who had been staring at me earlier, a girl, hadn't began to climb the stairs. In fact, she hadn't moved at all since I entered this room. I came closer and crouched beside her.

"What's your name?" I asked softly.

"Copper," she answered in a feeble voice. Copper. It seemed that they used metal names to name their Spares in this mine.

"How old are you, Copper?" I continued in the same gentle tone.

"Thirty." Thirty solstices of the Imperial system. Fifteen years old. That was the age that the Skinners considered old enough to survive beatings and torture. Even if you were a girl.

"Okay, Copper. You're safe now. No one is going to hurt you anymore. You just have to climb these stairs and follow the light like your friends did."

"I don't like the light," she replied with her voice brightening up. It was soft, mellifluous and gentle. Beautiful. "It shows to the other how hideous I am. It makes them fear me. Reject me."

Wondering about what she was talking about, I reduced my seismic sight so that it could give me the maximum amount of details about her. She was small for her age – but not for a Spare – and incredibly thin. She had several bruises on her body, but nothing serious. Except for her face. Half of it was scared from a burn. The scare went from the left top of her neck to her forehead. Her right side was mostly intact, except for some sparse small burns. Anger swelled up inside of me. This world was wrong. I opened my eyes.

"Listen, Copper," I said gently, but with firmness. "Look at those eyes. They can't see you. And they don't need to. Because I can say for sure that your voice is the most delightful one I have heard since longer than I can remember. Your appearance doesn't matter for those who do matter. You can't let those who inflicted this to you rob you of your freedom any longer. You can't give up on the light, because that would mean that they have won. You have to show them that no matter how hard they try to hurt you, you're stronger than them. Now go."

Cautiously, the frail girl rose and headed towards the stairs without a word. I followed her with my seismic sight as she went up, thinking that my words also applied for myself. I might not be able to see any light, but that didn't mean that I couldn't chase after it, even if it was a fool's errand. I got up and finished the mission.

 _I set foot outside the Imperial Palace for the first time in years today. I was surprised by the peace and order reigning over Imperial City. But what surprised me the most was how my people acted towards me. When I looked at them, they all bowed their head out of either fear or respect. Or both. But when I turned my back on them, I could feel their hateful gaze piercing me. They all looked at me like some kind of monster. Ungrateful bunch! Had they already forgotten who their savior was? Had they forgot to whom they owed their peaceful lives? I sacrificed everything for them and, in return, they looked at me as if I was the source of all evil. Each and every one of them! But maybe that was how it ought to be. After all, for the first time in forever, mankind was united. All driven by the same emotion; hate. If I could concentrate all of humanity's resentment towards me, I could create a world of unity! But again, alas, all of it would end if I were to die. I'm running out of time. I need the cure to death. Does that even exist?_

The soft warmness of the sun on my face woke me up. I was in an open plain of soft grass, under a sky of pristine blue. Blue? I stood up. The grass under my feet was green, gleaming from the sun's light. In the distance, huge trees were blooming in all kinds of different colors. Colors. It was beautiful. So beautiful that tears welled up in my eyes. Then I saw him. Shirtless, tall and muscular although quite thin, with long snow white hair, a man was floating in the air with his legs crossed and his eyes closed, as if he was meditating. I came closer. His face was young, his skin flawless. He was the incarnation of health and beauty.

"Who are you?" I asked cautiously. Hearing my voice, the man opened his eyes, discovering two golden irises.

"Well," he said, putting his feet back to the ground. "A guest. How surprising."

"Where am I?"

"You are in the Forgotten Realm, young man," he answered. His voice reminded me of Jin and Spade's; warm and suave.

"The Forgotten Realm?" I repeated, confused.

"Once called the Spirit World, or Spirit Realm," he replied. "Home to the spirits. But forgotten by the humans since the Avatar went astray.

"Astray?"

He smiled. "The Avatar hasn't always be the way he is now. Once, he was the embodiment of hope and balance."

"That's hard to believe," I replied doubtfully.

"I don't blame you. Anyway, you are the first human to come here since more than a century. What's your name?"

"I'm... Anvy," I said, believing that it sounded less strange than the name of the tool.

"Nice to meet you, Anvy. As for myself... You can call me Sky."

"Sky? Is that your name?"

"It's the name I choose here," he replied with a smile. "Here, I am as free as the air that roam the sky. As elegant as the droplets of water gliding through the sky to find their way here. As outspread as the earth rivaling the sky. And as warm as the sunlight gleaming in the sky."

"It sounds like the four elements," I said, deeply interested by his words.

"Indeed. The four elements can all be connected to the sky in some way or the other."

"So, Sky," I continued. "This... realm. Or world. Does it actually exist? Or is all this like some kind of dream?"

Again, the man smiled, discovering his pure white teeth. "Oh, it does exist," he replied. "But it is also some kind of dream. Your spirit is here, but your body is still where you were, probably asleep."

"Is that why I can see? All these colors that I never believe I'd see again... It's so..."

"Beautiful? Indeed. But this is not your world, Anvy. I understand how tempting it would be to stay here for all eternity, especially after knowing your handicap, but it would be wrong. In fact, it seems that you are already leaving. I hope to see you again, someday."

Confused, I suddenly felt dizzy and looked at my hand. It was fading. Understanding what was happening, I tried to ask Sky how I could came back again, but no voice came out of my mouth. Then, suddenly, I woke up in a colorless world at the sound of the morning waking bell. I refrain myself from crying. This world was so grim while the other was so beautiful! But I soon got myself together. I had a goal and it could only be accomplished in this world.

 _I found it. After years of research in the Wan Shi Tong's Library in the Spirit World, I finally found it. A small book hidden in the deepest part of the library; a journal written by Avatar Kyoshi herself. And in it, the secret of her longevity. Back when I was still learning about my role as the Avatar, I never really understood how everyone just took for granted that Kyoshi lived for over 230 years. How was it possible? Now I have the answer and nothing can stop me._

"Do you remember when you said that your eyes couldn't see me? That the way I looked did not matter for those who mattered? That day, you opened your eyes to me and I saw what you said you heard. The most beautiful thing I remembered seeing since forever. Your eyes were the light of hope in my world of despair. Blind they were, but never before had I seen so much life in one's eyes. Like two emeralds shinning in the dark, they guided me out of misery. So why? Why is it that right now, as I look into what used to be my light, all I see is lifeless and silent agony?"


	4. Chapter 4

_They all turned their back on me. My people, my friends, my wife, even my past lives. I am alone, walking silently in the loneliness that this world brought me to. My resolve should be unwavering, so why do I feel so much pain in my chest?_

"You look preoccupied. What's the matter, Anvy?" Slowly, like a feather gliding on the wind, Sky descended to the ground. Ever since I first came to this Spirit World, my mind, or spirit, occasionally ended up coming back here when I slept. Most of the time, Sky was already here when I came and even when he wasn't, it was never long before he appeared to greet me. When I had asked, he confirmed me that he was indeed human, but every time I tried to know more about anything personal from him, he either dodged the matter or simply remained quiet.

"Anvy?" he repeated as I realized I was staring at him, lost in my thoughts.

"Sorry," I said, looking down. "Things back in the real world are a bit complicated right now and I don't really know how to deal with them."

"The physical world you mean," he replied with his usual friendly smile. "This world is as real as the other one. So, would you like to speak to me about it?"

In fact, that may have been the reason I came here. Every time my spirit came to this world, I had always been troubled by some kind of problem and talking about it with Sky always helped me figuring things out.

"Well, there's two girls," I started, not without noticing the mischievous smile on his face after hearing my words. "There's this one who I don't really get along with, but with whom I'm supposed to form a bond, and there's this other one who I really appreciate, but shouldn't get too close with."

"I see," he said with perplexity, but also with amusement shinning in his golden eyes. He softly laughed. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were mixed up in some kind of tale about a shotgun wedding and a forbidden love."

"What's a wedding?" I asked, confused. From time to time, Sky would use words that I couldn't understand, like this one, and when I would ask him about it, sorrow would always cover his face, just like it did right now. After that, he would always sigh and give me the same answer.

"A word from a lost time." Then, after taking a deep breath, he came back to his usual smiling self and continued on my matter. "So, first tell me why you shouldn't get close to the girl you like. Is she rejecting you?"

"No. In fact, she's the one who always seems to seek me out. At first it was because I was the only one she trusted after I saved her, but as we spent time together we became friends."

"Friends?" he interrupted me with his teasing voice.

"Yes," I replied convincingly. "Anyway, my master saw that and warned me about it. The path that I chose is a very dangerous one. He said that bonds with people who do not share our battlefield would only make me hesitate at the most crucial moments. He also asked me to think about her feelings. What I do could get me killed anytime. If that were to happen, all I would have bring to her is grief." As I finished my story, I looked at his face and was surprised to see a saddened expression. I had thought that he would have teased me like he usually did, but he just stood there, gazing at me with sorrow in his eyes.

"Anvy," he finally said in a deep voice. "You're saying that you shouldn't live your life the way you want it because you might die, but I think that you should do what you want to do exactly _because_ you might die." Troubled by his words, I tried to argue that this would be selfish, but no voice came out of my mouth. I was waking up. Before I completely faded away, Sky gave me a parting smile. But it wasn't the usual bright and cheerful one.

 _My wife tried to kill me today. I had no choice. I had to kill her. It turned out that she had been an assassin from the beginning. That she never really loved me. Why did she wait this long to try to kill me? If she had tried the first night that we spent together, I wouldn't be in so much pain right now. I'm breaking down. Those who sent her would pay the price of it._ Let justice be done though the heavens fall.

"Wake up, brat!" I opened my eyes in a gasp. Of course, unlike in the other world, they saw nothing. "Get up!" said my master's voice. "Faster!"

From his restlessness, I knew something was wrong. Quickly, I got off my bed, put my feet on the hard ground and expanded my seismic sight as far as I could. Everything was blurry, but I could discern a lot of people running in every directions. They were panicking.

"What's happening?" I asked to master Shiryoku as we hurried out of my room.

"We're under attack," he replied in his hoarse voice, while both of us ran towards the center of the commotion. "It's Cerberus."

"Cerberus?" I repeated. I had heard the name before but never lingered on its meaning.

"The Imperial three-headed hound. It's a group of three master benders who hunt rebel camps." I felt a strong nervousness in his voice. If this group could make my master this anxious, then they had to be strong. "Can you locate them?" he asked.

I focused. "Hardly," I answered after a while. "They're too far."

The old man snorted. "You need more training. Anyway, just go meet up with Hikari in the main hall. From what I can sense, she and a couple of other benders are fighting against one of them. I'll go face off the one guarding the exit." Whereupon, my master skewed to the right, opening holes in every wall on his way. Left alone, I did the same towards the main hall, running as fast as I could. Why did this underground camp had to be so big?

As I ran opening wall after wall, I tried to focus my seismic sight ahead of me. The main hall was in my reach now and I was able to perceive what was going on. In the center of the room, a man was standing still, save for his right arm which he was swinging around in fluid motions. I suddenly realized that he was waterbending in a bored, effortless way. Facing him, I sometimes felt Hikari touching the ground and then leaping off again and again, as she was probably trying to fight her opponent in midair, something that would have work perfectly against me, but apparently not against this waterbender. Scattered around those two, five bodies were lying on the ground, breathing but unconscious. They probably were the benders mentioned by my master, except that they weren't fighting with Hikari anymore. I needed to hurry. If this waterbender guy knocked out five benders by himself and then was able to hold his ground effortlessly against Hikari, he had to be extremely powerful and it was only a matter of time until he would decide to end his game against the airbending girl.

When I finally arrived to the hall, I heard something in the air coming towards me, so I swiftly jumped aside just before Hikari entered my sight by hitting the ground where I had been a second before. I hurried to her side and reached out to help her.

"You okay?" I quickly asked her, while keeping an eye – more or less – on the waterbender. However, with obvious disdain, the girl slapped my hand with the back of hers, got up and leaped once again in the air. A second later, I heard two powerful air blasts that the waterbender easily countered by moving his right arm, which made his water rise and splash at the contact of the blasts. Then, he made a few more fluid moves with his arm and I heard the water whipping the air as it stroke Hikari who was propelled back to the ground, hitting it with a worrying strength.

Before the airbender got up to get another beating, I quickly stomped the ground, thus raising an earth boulder in front of me which I stroke with great strength, sending it flying at high speed towards the waterbender. As expected, the latter bent his water without even looking in my direction and hit the boulder with it in a swift sweeping slash. However, instead of just being tossed aside, the rock shattered, releasing a great amount of dust. This trick was actually the first that I had learned from my master. Hiding dust in a fragile shell of earth was the most efficient way to create a surprise smokescreen against overconfident opponents.

I was about to take advantage of the blindness of the enemy and the surprise effect when I heard water whipping the air towards me. I quickly rose a wall to my right, blocking the attack, but another came right after from the left and hit me on the side, propelling me against my own wall.

"That was a good call," said a slow, emotionless voice coming from the waterbender. "Unfortunately, I can feel every last bit of moisture in this dry place. And now that I've wet you, there's nowhere you can hide."

He really had to underestimate me for revealing his ability like that. The best thing to do in those cases was to let the opponent believe in his superiority. With that in mind, I got back up and proceed to send weak attacks at my enemy while barely defending against his. His combat style consisted of using water as a powerful whip able to attack at high speed. Thanks to my seismic sight and my trained earing, I was able to determine where and how he would attack by observing his simple arm gestures and listening to the water as it swept in the air. I was actually glad that he wasn't taking this seriously, because there was no way I could have win if he decided to actually move more than his right arm.

My tactic was simple; pretending to barely resist his attack while moving around and weakening sparse spots of earth on the ground. When I finally finished laying my trap, I let his water whip hit me and fell on the ground. Loudly, the waterbender sighed out of boredom, as if he was disappointed by my weakness. Then, to finish me off, he rose his hand in the air, his water following the motion, but just before he could bring it down to inflict the last blow, I hit the ground with both of my fist, splitting the earth in every direction where I previously weakened the earth. Startled by the sudden earthshaking, the waterbender aborted his attack to maintain his balance, but to no avail, as a small portion of the floor suddenly collapsed just under him. As he fell into the hole, I ran towards a wall and hit it vigorously with my palms and then with the back of my hands. The earth split all the way up to the ceiling, of which a small portion above the hole crumbled and buried the waterbender.

Exhausted and relieved from stress, I let myself go against the wall while I tried to recover my breath.

"Bravo!" exclaimed a jesting male voice somewhere. Quickly, I got back into a combat stance, and probed the place for the source of the new voice. I couldn't find it. In fact, I couldn't find anything. Not Hikari, who was supposed to be lying unconscious somewhere, nor the other knocked out benders or the waterbender buried underground. Not even the tables and chairs that should have been scattered around during the battle or the walls delimiting the hall. Nothing. I was blind. Again.

The voice laughed. A squeaky, mad laugh. "By the Avatar!" he said between two laughs. "That expression on your face! I LOVE it!" He laughed some more, slapping his hands against himself in his hilarity. "If only you could look at yourself in a mirror right now! Oh right! You wouldn't see anything!" He laughed. Laughed and laughed. A demented laugh. Insane. Then he suddenly stopped and I heard a whisper in my ear. "Want me to tell you a secret?" said his sinister voice. Quickly, I tried to hit him with an elbow strike, but he was already gone. He laughed.

"Who are you?" I exclaimed nervously. I was scared. For the first time since I learned to see with earthbending, I was blind. Defenseless, at the mercy of this new unknown foe. Suddenly, I sensed danger coming from behind me, but before I could react, I felt the sharp pain of a foot striking me in the back and propelling me face down on the floor. Immediately, I tried to retaliate by raising earth spikes from the ground where the attack came from, but all I heard afterward was silence. "Who are you?" I asked again in pain. He giggled of satisfaction. "What have you done?" I shouted, completely panicked.

"What have I done?" he repeated, amused. "Now, now, surely you're not THAT ignorant about your own ability?" he said mockingly. Then, he once again kicked me with his barefoot, this time in the stomach. "Do you have ANY idea how easy it is for me to send enough vibrations into the earth to overwhelm you?" he asked furiously before hitting me in the face. I stayed face down on the ground without moving. Overwhelm me? In other words, this guy was using earthbending in the same way that I was with seismic sight, except that the frequency at which he vibrated the earth was so great that it disrupted every other vibrations in the vicinity. "Oh! Your dumbfounded face tells me that you finally understand!" He kicked me and then lost himself in his mad laugh once again when he saw that I wasn't moving anymore, as I pretended to be unconscious. Then, just like last time, he suddenly stopped. But when he spoke again, this time, he sounded like a complete different man.

"But it's too late." His voice was now collected and serious and his mocking, high-pitched tone had become deep and conceited. "Mayvin. Stop slacking off and get out of that hole." A short while after he said those words, I heard the rocks that should have buried the waterbender move and someone climbing out of the hole. My last opponent was alive and well.

"Can't I rest a bit from time to time?" he said in a sigh.

"Later," replied calmly the earthbender. "I've acquire the objective, we're leaving. Zapp already retreated."

"Aye, sir..." let out the waterbender, seemingly unmotivated.

"Oh. Bring the boy faking unconsciousness with you," added the leader. As I heard those word, I immediately tried to get up and flee, but a water whip stroke me down before I could even get on my feet.

"What for?" asked the one who was immobilizing me on the floor.

The earthbender chuckled quietly. Then, with his former silly yet terrifying voice, he replied while barely holding his laugher. "For personal fun." Then, the water got off me, but stroke me again in the back of my neck with ice hardening the hit. As I lost consciousness, I felt the water grabbing me by an ankle as it dragged me along the two Cerberus's members.

 _I didn't kill them. That would have been far too merciful. Instead, I turned every single rebel into a slave condemned to work for the Empire until they have expire their last breath. And even then, they shall not rest in peace, for their children shall take their place. Every child born from slaves shall be born slave._

...

 _What have I become?_

I opened my eyes. Darkness. Nothing new. Cautiously, I tried to move, but soon realized that I was hanging above the ground by my wrists. The cold metal of the cuffs holding me chafed my skin painfully as I tried to pull on them, but they were linked to strong metal chains firmly hooked into the ceiling. I had no way out of this. I knew what was coming. Dreadful memories of my time at the mercy of the Skinners came to me. Not again.

Please...

Not again.


	5. Chapter 5

_I'm broken, suffering. Helpless, dying. Surrounded by darkness. I want it to end. Please, I'm begging. Oh, wretched existence of mine, won't you leave me alone so I could die. I don't want to play anymore. Can't you just let me rest in a peaceful slumber? I could sleep and never wake up again. I could die and escape this pain. You've won this game, so let me go without a word. So that I can leave this twisted world. Please, someone, help me. Please, anyone, kill me._

I tried to sleep, but the pain was too great. My body was shaking, my mind blanking. I had thought that I'd seen it all. That the Skinners had shown me all there was. I was wrong. So wrong. The Skinners were amateurs, thinking that brute strength was the best way to inflict pain. But he knew better. He knew that striking precisely where it hurt could worth all the punches in the face of the world. He knew that broking a phalanx was way more effective than cutting a finger. And that it was repeatable. But he also knew that hurting the mind was as important as the body.

"Let's play a game," he would say with his dreadful, insane voice each time he would enter the room. And every single time, he would whisper me the very same rules in my ear. "If you don't scream, I'll stop. But if you do…" Then he would laugh. A laugh that would haunt me every second spent alone in the dark. A mad, demented laugh. And then would come the pain. Of course, I would lose the game, so it would last until he would switch. Until the other one would take his place. The frightfully serene one. "I'm sorry," he would say with pity, but without regret. "But I have no choice. It's the only way to satisfy _him_ ". And he would leave. Until the next day. Or maybe he came at night. I didn't know. I didn't care.

To keep me alive, Mayvin, the waterbender of Cerberus, came to my metal cell regularly to feed me some dry bread and heal my wounds that were potentially lethal. That was my only solace in this hell. But it was also my curse. Because I knew that each healed wound would be the target of a new one, and that the pain would repeat over and over again.

 _The world is breaking. Spinning, collapsing. He's smiling at me. I can't see him, but I can feel it. He looks at my maimed body and he smiles. He laughs while I try to endure this pain. But I'm broken now, so why should I try? I've got no choice but to bare this pain within me. Once, I tried to control this world of mine in which I've been thrown in, pledging to achieve the goal that I had decided for myself no matter what. Laughable. Pathetic. Ludicrous._ Admirable. _Stupid. Why? Ignorant. Pathetic. Naïve. Sickening, revolting, foolish, pathetic,_ noble, _disgusting, filthy nasty repugnant pathetic putrid_ greatness _detestable idiotic pathetic pathetic pathetic…_

 _The world is breaking. Spinning, collapsing. I'm smiling at him._

"Eat up," said Mayvin nonchalantly. "If you die, I'll be the one he'll blame."

I couldn't understand this waterbender. He obviously had no affection towards the other two Cerberus members and he didn't seem to have any goal either, so why was he part of this group? Clearly, he wasn't enjoying my suffering, but he didn't pity me neither. He simply didn't care. Was he afraid of the man who inflicted me all this pain? Or was he just doing this because he had nothing else to do? I guess it didn't matter after all; he was keeping me alive. Was that or good or bad thing though, I did not know. After making sure I ate all my food and healing some of my wounds, he begun making his way out of the cell. For a second, I thought on assaulting him from behind, but quickly realized that I had no chance. All I could do was shrivel up in a corner and cry. Or was I laughing?

 _The pain won't stop. His laugh won't leave my head. He's enjoying my screams like a gentle melody. I want to kill him. I want him to kill me. Kill. Kill. I want to kill them all. Every single one of them. Why should I be the only one to be hurt? Come, let me show you my world. A world of despair and suffering. I smile and laugh until, far away, I hear my own voice. But soon, it's not even mine anymore._

I looked into the mirroring water of a small pond. Its reflection was that of a small child who only dreamt of a simple life with his parents. His young, naive green eyes were looking at me with a strong curiosity and his smile warmed my heart of a profound nostalgia. Then, a tall man with snow white hair and golden eyes appeared behind me and put a hand on my small head.

"Hello, Anvy," he said with his warm and suave voice while kneeling to be at the same level as me. "What are you doing here?"

"I don't want to go back there," I answered, pouting. "They're doing bad things to me."

"I'm so sorry," he replied with genuine pity on his face. "But you can't stay here indefinitely, it is not your world and this child is not who you are anymore."

"But I can't go back," I insisted. "The third head of the big bad dog is hurting me with his electricity. I just want to go home. I want my mom and dad."

"You know you can't," he said. "Remember who you are. Your parents are dead, you need to let them go. But you shouldn't forget them. Remember all of those you lost, all of those who you once held dear and then think about those who are still here. Those who you must protect. Can you remember what you must do for all of their sake?"

"Stop… Stop it!" I exclaimed, burying my face into my childish hands. "I don't want to be hurt anymore! I don't care about anything else. I just want all of this to stop…"

"So… Are you giving up? If you really wish it, then I can end it all for you right now." He stood back up and looked down at me, the sun behind him casting his shadow onto my short body. On his backlit face, all I could see were two ferocious amber eyes looking directly into my very soul. "I ask of you, Anvil," he said imperiously, using my real name; a name that I had never said to him. "Do you wish to die?"

Deep inside of me, a young man enchained in a dark place and tortured to madness screamed "yes". But something in the eyes of the man before me stopped me from listening to him.

"Why?" ask desperately the anguished young man inside of me through my child's body. "You know nothing! The pain of lightning passing through your body. The suffering of your skin getting ripped off again and again. The sensation as the bones of your body get broken one by one. The anguish of hundred needles piercing through your most painful nerves. The burn of a red-hot iron scorching your skin. The… The…" Unable to think about it anymore, his voice died out while I fell on my knees, crying and sobbing. "I just want the pain to stop," said the voices of both the child and the maimed young man.

"I can't stop it," replied the white haired man. "But I can help you making it stop yourself."

Surprised, I looked up at the man with hope. He was smiling sorrowfully and his eyes were full of sadness. Then, he kneeled once again to be at my size and put one of his hand on my chest and the other on my forehead. A second later, his eyes widened and suddenly glowed of a bright blue. A beautiful blue. Soon after, I was back on my feet, enlightened, and the tall man got up to match my size which had returned to normal.

"Sky," I said sorely while fading away. "This is probably the last time we see each other."

"I wouldn't be so sure of it," he replied as I completely disappeared.

 _A lesson without pain is meaningless, for one cannot obtain anything without scarifying something else in return. Therefore, to defeat a monster…_

 _I became one myself._

"Let's play a game," he whispered in my ear. Like each time, my hands were tied by metal cuffs linked to a chain hooked to the ceiling, hanging me above ground. "If you don't scream, I'll stop." In a swift movement, I forced my wrists against the cuffs while bending the metal so that it would break on the impact. Surprised, the mad man took a step back, but before he could get far enough or react and even before my feet touched the ground, I threw my hands towards his face and pierced both of his eyes with my fingers. Shocked and in pain, he moved back, screaming in terror.

 _Delightful._

"DAMN YOU! You're no metalbender!" he shouted, painfully confused.

As my feet landed on the ground, I realised that I was standing on earth, so immediately scanned the area with my seismic sense.

"Underground? Were you so confident that you thought it wouldn't be necessary to deprive me of earth?"

He clicked his tongue. "I'm also an earthbender, you dog!" he said while throwing two punches in the air, launching the same number of rocks from the wall behind him towards me.

"Impressive," I said calmly as I raised a finger, creating an earth wall on which my foe's rocks crashed. "Even in this state you're still able to fight? But you can't afford to stop my seismic sight now that you've lost your eyes too."

"How…? You didn't even move!" As panicked as he was, I couldn't even determine which one of them was speaking right now.

"I did," I replied, moving another finger. Behind him, two spikes emerged at high speed from the wall and pierced him in each of his calves. Then, in a second, I had closed the gap between us, put my hand on his face and slammed his head against the wall. I smiled.

 _Suffer. Scream. Die. Kill. Pain._

Not giving, he tried to punch me but I dodged it by jumping back. Then, before he could tried anything else, I repeated the same move as earlier and multiple spikes pierced through his hands, arms and thighs, immobilizing him completely. There, pinned on the wall, he was defenseless and at my mercy. My smile widened. Slowly, I walked towards him and brought my mouth near his ear.

"Let's play a game," I whispered.

 _He screams, I smile. I break, he cries. There's something deep inside of me trying to hold me down, but there's no turning back. It's too late. I'm crazy, but I have control. Somewhere a small child tries to stop me, his light collides with my darkness. But it's no use. I reject him. He's too pure and I'm too damaged. "Who are you?" he asks me. He stares at me. I need to protect him. I can't let him get hurt anymore. I will be the monster pulling the strings. You can rest, now. Leave the rest up to me._

I was trying to wipe the blood of my hands when I sensed them. Five people were running around randomly, as if they were looking for something. Suddenly, one of them left my sight for several seconds before touching the ground again. I focused my seismic sight and confirmed what I had suspected; it was Hikari. Were they here to rescue me? I snorted. I was about to go look for the other Cerberus's member when I recognize one of the five people.

"Copper?" I mumbled, confused. _No. Stay away._ What was she doing here? She wasn't even a fighter. _I don't want you to see what I've become._ As if she knew her way around, the girl was approaching my position at a high pace. _Please, stop searching. I don't want to hurt you. I couldn't bare to hurt you._ Before I could do anything about the mutilated corpse on the wall and all of the blood on my body, she entered the room.

"Anvy?" she said, dumbfounded as she froze from seeing me in that state.

 _Don't look at me. Your gaze would haunt me._ "What are you doing here, Copper?" I asked with an empty voice. _Please, leave me alone. Those dirty hands can never touch you again._

Probably terrified by the man pinned on the wall, she fell on her knees while gasping and putting her hands before her mouth. I was so focused on Copper that I didn't notice Hikari coming from behind her. Silently, she looked at me and at the body, trying to figure out what happened.

"Did you do _that_?" asked anxiously Copper.

 _I don't want to lose you. But for that, you have to lose me._ "Obviously," I answered, conceited. "Now, go back. I still have things to do." On those words, I turned my back on them and started to walk away. _Forgive me._

"Wait!" she tried to stop me. "Please, Anvy. Let's go home…"

 _Shut up!_ "Home? Copper, my home is a time a place that ceased to exist a long time ago. I'm not going back to the rebellion. They are of no use to me anymore. I'll go directly for the Avatar." Behind me, I felt her tears running down her cheeks.

"Then… Then let me come with you." I stopped and turned around. Slowly, I made my way back to her and crouch before her the same way I did the first time we met.

"I have no need for the weak," I said harshly. _You deserve better. A monster can't be your savior._ "It's best if you forget about me." _Don't forget. You can't forget. You won't. DON'T YOU DARE! Please… Don't forget about me. Remember me the way I used to be. As who I still should be._

"Take me with you then," said a voice that I had never heard before. It was feminine yet powerful. Wild yet melodious. The voice of a warrior. I turned my face towards Hikari. "I don't know what happened, but you're not the naive kid you used to be anymore. Also, I agree with you, the rebellion is useless. If you're going for the Avatar then I'm in."

I considered her words for some time before deciding. Admittedly, fighting the Avatar alone would be stupid. Moreover, Hikari was strong, a true genius in the art of killing and I wouldn't care if she'd die or not. An idea arose in my head.

"Alright," I answered, putting myself in front of her with a menacing look on my face. "But let me be clear; I'm the one in charge. Let's go, follow me. I know where to start." Without waiting for her answer, I turned around and walked away. Behind me, she snorted, but still obeyed.

"Anvy," Copper called me with a weak voice. "Do you remember when you said that your eyes couldn't see me? That the way I looked did not matter for those who mattered? That day, you opened your eyes to me and I saw what you said you heard. The most beautiful thing I remembered seeing since forever. Your eyes were the light of hope in my world of despair. Blind they were, but never before had I seen so much life in one's eyes. Like two emeralds shinning in the dark, they guided me out of misery. So why? Why is it that right now, as I look into what used to be my light, all I see is lifeless and silent agony?"

I did not stop or turn around.

In silence, I led Hikari through the mazes formed by underground caves until we reached a natural underground lake. The sight might have been incredibly wonderful if my eyes could actually see anything. At the edge of the lake, Mayvin was soaking his feet, completely disinterested by our presence. At his sight, Hikari quickly took a combat stance, ready to leap in the air. She probably was still upset about the beating the waterbender gave her during their last encounter.

"Mayvin," I said composedly before the airbender could do anything rash. "Your chief is dead."

"Is that so?" he replied with a bored sigh without looking at us. "Look, I have no interest in stopping you if you want to leave. Fighting you would be too much of a pain."

"I'm not here to fight. I want you to join me." Startled, Mayvin turned his head and stared at me in incomprehension. Behind me, I could feel Hikari's astonishment.

After a while, the waterbender chuckled softly. "This intimidating look on your face… It's even worse than his. Are you going to Imperial City?"

"We are," I answered.

"Then I'll stick around until then." Leisurely, he came out of the water, dried his feet with his waterbender and put his boots back on. "Shall we get moving then?" he asked with his usual monotone voice.

"There's one thing I want to know before that," I said. "Where is the lightning bender? I have things to settle with him."

"With her, you mean," he replied. "Zapp went off on a mission not so long ago."

"Do you know where?"

"I do. You want to go after her?" he asked reluctantly, not really wanting to know.

"I want to _hunt_ her," I replied sharply. Then, without warning, I moved two fingers and a pillar of earth rose under our feet, lifting us vertically at tremendous speed. Before we crashed on the ceiling, I raised my arm and a tunnel opened all the way up to the surface. A few seconds later, we were outside. Neither of them showed it, but I could feel their awe.

"Something happened, right?" suddenly asked Mayvin. "You didn't gain power, no, just… Knowledge."

I ignored him. "Which way?" He pointed north and I started walking.

"Then let's go, _Cerberus_."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter** **6  
** _Questions_

 _How many days have passed like this? I'm so alone, so lost inside of me. Yet my journey carries on. Sometimes I dream of you and me simply talking to each other. But now that he's me I know that there's no looking back. As long as I'm alive I'll keep on struggling. Just know that you'll always be a part of me, somewhere deep inside, lying with my broken pieces. I'm sorry I made you cry, sorry that it will be our last memory. I just wish I could have seen your smile a first and last time._

Furiously, Hikari leaped in the air like a bird of prey towards Mayvin, who effortlessly slapped her down like a fly with a water whip. As soon as she hit the ground, the airbender got back up, took an air impulse and charged again, but this time closer to the floor.

As nonchalantly as ever, the waterbender swung his arm from left to right and his whip followed, threatening to strike Hikari on her side. However, just before the water hit her flank, I heard the girl taking out some sort of small blade from her jacket, which she threw at Mayvin with incredible speed, probably boosted by airbending. The whip changed its course and stopped the dagger a few inches before it could pierce into the waterbender's face, but doing so gave Hikari time to get close to him. With swift dexterity, the girl pulled out another blade, but before she could do anything with it, Mayvin quickly raised his left arm and water suddenly appeared from nowhere and then froze around Hikari's arm, stopping her attack. The waterbender then took a stance with his arm behind him, as if he was preparing to punch her. However, his fist was open and a vast amount of water was gathering in his palm in a condensed small sphere. The airbender tried to step back, but Mayvin was quicker; he stroke the girl in the stomach with his opened palm, which made the highly pressurized water sphere explode, sending Hikari flying away.

"She made you use both of your arms," I said stolidly after confirming that the girl was lying unconscious several meters away. Since we began traveling together, she had made a habit of challenging Mayvin to regular duels. Supposedly, they were fights to death, but while the airbender was clearly aiming for just that, her opponent had never decided to kill her.

Oddly, the usually emotionless waterbender chuckled lightly. "Indeed," he then replied. "The speed at which she improves never stops to surprise me. If I hadn't condensed the air vapor to stop her arm, I'd be agonizing on the ground with a pierced lung."

"She may be improving, but she'll hit a wall sooner or later. The way she uses airbending is wrong. It's not supposed to be used in an aggressive way."

"Well, maybe you're right. Or maybe she'll develop a new fighting style more effective than the older one."

I dismissed his suggestion and asked what have been on my mind for quite some time. "If you're this strong, why were you letting the mad earthbender leading Cerberus? After fighting him, I have a hard time believing that he could've defeated you."

"You just caught him off-guard. Considering how your body was, you shouldn't have been able to even stand straight at that time. Beside, you seem to be misunderstanding something. Cerberus had no leader. I just listened to him because he'd get mad if I didn't and it would've been a bother to deal with it."

"So that you're saying that the lightning user tortured me with her electricity out of her own free will? Good to hear. It only means that I'll enjoy it even more when I'll pay her back."

"You shouldn't take Zapp too lightly. Honestly, when it comes to fighting, I've never seen anyone as good as her. Strength, agility, stamina, instinct, intelligence, and especially speed, she has it all. And that's nothing compared to when she combines all of those with her prodigious lightning bending. I've never actually seen her firebend normally, but she uses lightning as easily and as fast as I waterbend, if not better. Her only flaw would –"

"Mayvin," I interrupted him. "You talk too much. It doesn't suit you. Wake the girl up and let's get going."

"Right," he simply replied, unshaken by my rebuke.

"And one more thing," I added as he poured water onto Hikari's face. "The old Cerberus might not have had a leader before, but it has one now, remember that."

 _How many years have passed like this? I'm so alone, so lost in this broken world. Why did it turned out like this? It was supposed to be a world of peace and prosperity. Children should have been running and playing on vast and fertile lands. Instead, they are digging dry and sterile earth with a collar around their neck. I'm the one who started it all and trying to stop it would only makes things worse. Is there no one out there who could relieve me of my burden?_

"How long to our destination?" I asked as we settled a camp fire for the night.

"We should arrive before dusk tomorrow," answered Mayvin.

"You guys do realize that we're being followed, right?" said Hikari as she pulled out a dagger.

"Of course," I replied, assertive. "He begun tailing us since we entered this wasteland."

"That's two days. You knew all this time and did nothing?"

"Don't worry about it," I retorted, unconcerned. "I have plans for him. Mayvin, wait." Disinterested by our conversation, the waterbender had begun to walk away, but sighed of disappointment as I called him back. "Now that we're almost there, I have questions and I need answers."

He let out another sigh, but his time of exasperation. "Alright. Ask away," he said as Hikari moved away to pretend to occupy herself with something else while eavesdropping on us.

"First, about the night when you attacked the rebels' camp. The... mad earthbender said that he had acquired "the objective". What did he mean?"

"I don't know. Don't give me this scary look, it's true. It was _his_ mission. Zapp and I only came because he asked us to create a diversion."

"And you didn't even asked him why?" I asked, incredulous.

"I didn't care why. I still don't, to be honest."

I sighed. "So this 'Zapp' may know?"

"Possibly," he replied, uncertain. "But I doubt it. Zapp didn't like when we meddled in her business, so she refrained to meddle in ours most of the time."

"Alright. Now about your bending abilities." Upon hearing my words, Mayvin's body suddenly stiffened. I was right to ask. "Can you bloodbend?"

For a while, he stared at me in silence, trying to figure me out. "Why is it that you, who must have spent most of your life under the ground as a slave, happen to know about a secret waterbending art?" he finally asked.

"Answer the question," I replied menacingly.

After another silence, he once more let out one of his sigh. "Only during a full moon."

"Good. And are you able to block someone's bending?"

Again, surprise of my knowledge showed on his face, but he didn't try to question me this time. "To some extent. I've work as an Inhibitor in the past, but it's been a while since I've done it, so I might need some practice to get back to the level I was."

"Inhibitor? What's that?"

"You know about bending blocking, but not about the Inhibitors?" he asked in a tone that told me he wasn't sure if he believed me. I kept silent so that he would continue. "Well, alright. Inhibitors are a selected few waterbenders chosen by the Avatar himself who are able to 'inhibit' someone's chi flowing through bloodbending. Because of this ability, they are responsible of removing the slaves' bending and are the highest executives of the slavery system and report directly to the Avatar."

As he told me this, I remembered what I knew of how things worked in the mine I used to work in. There were the Spares, my former family and I, who were slaves forced to work under terrible conditions. Then there were the Skinners who acted as supervisors and punishers. They were always armed with special wooden sticks that often ripped the skin off the bodies of those they hit. Evidently, the Skinners were only just brutes incapable of managing the mine by themselves. That's where the Inquisitors played their role. As executives, they ruled the mine with an iron fist and as master metalbenders, they were the only one capable of opening and closing the massive metal grid marking the only exit that I had so often looked up at in hope of one day escaping to the surface with all of my friends.

Now I knew what would have happen if one of the Spares had been caught bending. One of these Inhibitors would have come to suppress the bending abilities of the slave. That is, if the latter survived a probable beating by the Skinners.

"That's all for now," I dismissed him

Only half satisfied by the answers he gave me, I got up and started walking toward the spy who had been following us for some time. He was quite a distance away from us, far enough to be unseen by standard means, but close enough to see our fire camp from his position. And to be within my reach.

Slowly, I took a long, deep breath and a steady stance. Then, as I exhaled the air from my lungs, I swiftly but firmly stomped the ground with my foot and a scream resounded where the spy had been hiding. I had trapped him in a rock coffin.

Without losing a second in case the man was an earthbender, I ran at full speed toward the improvised prison. When I got there, the spy was hitting the walls from the inside with desperate strength. I studied him.

He was short and thin with long hair tied in a ponytail. From the shape of his body, I deduced that he was quite young; no more than fifteen years old. His muscles were weak, but he didn't seem to be unhealthy from a lack of food or water. In other words, he was too weak to be an imperial soldier, but not enough to be a wasteland brigand here to rob us.

To talk to him, I poked his prison with my fingertip, opening a small hole through it. Startled, the spy suddenly stopped his beating against the earth and tried to look through the hole.

"Let me out!" he cried. His voice was young, as I had expected, and fear was obviously strong in it.

"I'm afraid I can't," I retorted with a calm but intimidating voice. "You'll have to answer a few questions, lad."

"I won't tell you anything, you damn traitor!"

Traitor? So he was a rebel. And not a smart one. That meant that the Rebellion wasn't happy that I left. Or maybe they were after Mayvin for being a member of old Cerberus. But why follow us this far? I thought it didn't make sense but then remembered "the objective". Cerberus had attacked one of the rebels' camp only to leave right after they had acquired it. It must have been important.

"What does Jin want?" I asked him menacingly.

"I'm not like you. I won't tell anything." His voice had changed from terrified to determined. He had guts. But had he enough?

"You will. Because if you don't, I'll make sure not to kill you."

For a while, he tried to understand my words. "You don't make any sense," he then said.

"Really?" I retorted, purposely adding pleasure to my voice. "Tell me, do you know what's worse than dying in horrible pain?" His eyes widened as he realized where I was getting at. "Indeed. It's to _live_ in horrible pain."

Terrified, the boy fell on his knees, convinced that I was serious. And I was. To stay alive in this world, one needed to be the one hurting others rather than the one to be hurt. I had learned this the hard way after experiencing torture for a second time. The countless scars on by body itched as I recalled those suppressed memories.

I suddenly came back to the present when I realized that something was wrong. Inside the earth prison, the boy's breathing and heartbeat were quickly slowing. I swiftly swung my arm, opening the cage, and bent over to examine the boy. His mouth reeked of a poison used by rebel assassins. I had been careless.

He was dead. I gritted my teeth and hit the ground with my fist. Stupid! If I had not been so distracted by my own thoughts, I should have been able to detect the small poison capsule inside his mouth with my seismic sight. Now every bit of information he could have been holding was lost.

 _Are you angry?_

I was angry. At the boy, but mostly at myself. I had let precious knowledge slip me by.

 _Is that really the source of your anger?_

I straightened up. The boy's lifeless body was now lying on the hard ground, with his eyes wide open. He would never become an adult. He would die in this wasteland where none of the people who cared about him would ever find him. His body would decay and be eaten by the wilds. A kid.

I felt nothing at that.

 _Do you really?_

I left his body alone in the dark of the night and headed back to the camp.

 _Everyone acknowledge that nightmares are only bad dreams. I don't. I believe that it is the dreams that are good nightmares. While it may seem to be saying the same thing in a different way, I believe that this difference changes the meaning of the sentence completely. The same could be said about death being the end of life. It is wrong. Life is the prelude to death. Darkness is always present before light. Something is always empty before it is filled. And the world is first evil before balance is brought to it. That is the answer I have come to believe after living for so many years._

"Here we are," said Mayvin.

I 'looked' at the place. It was a rather small village at the very edge of the wasteland, marked by a small river going through it and a bit of vegetation. I reckoned that no more than a hundred folks lived inside of it. The houses were big, but there were only a few of them. I located a market place at the center, with merchant stands placed a bit everywhere.

I frowned. The people who lived here were living their life so freely it angered me. What have they been doing while my friends and I rotted underground for years? Had they ever wonder where did the metal they were trading came from? Had they ever experience the hardship of working under a whip? Had they ever been so tired from their day's work that all the muscles of their body ached and their head spun so much it prevented any kind of rest and their heartbeat seemed like a hammer pounding their temple every single second? For a moment, I wished I could make them feel all of the pain that I had ever endured, but quickly collected myself. _Focus._ I had only one purpose for coming here. As soon as I would have ended the lightning bender, we would head for Imperial City. I reminded myself that I also needed to seek answers before doing that.

We had walked all the day before arriving here, so most of the villagers had closed themselves in their house for the night. I tried to approach those who hadn't, but as soon as anyone spotted us, they ran into their home, abandoning whatever they were doing previously. Outsider didn't seem to be welcomed here.

When the last person had fled, Hikari proposed to forcibly open a house and ask our questions and I was about to agree when I sensed someone coming out from their home to meet us. As I looked at her through my seismic sight, I knew that we had found Zapp.

I suddenly understood why Mayvin had been so wary about her. Her gait was balanced and steady and precise. She was about the same height as me and, though she was lighter, seemed much more imposing. The muscles of her body were trained as strong as they could be without having too much mass, offering her the perfect balance between speed and power. Her body was like a weapon in itself. Her facial structure seemed to indicate that she was younger than me. I noticed that her left eye, covered by a strand of hair, was crossed by a scar in the exact same way that both of my own eyes were. Had she been a slave at some point? I decided that it did not matter.

"Isn't that Mayvin? What are you doing here?" she asked. I could feel an unfailing confidence in her voice, which sounded more mature than what I would have guessed.

I spoke before the waterbender could. "We're here for you."

She turned her face towards me and suddenly all my instinct tingled and made me unconsciously take a step backward. I could not even see it, but the single glare she shot at me had achieved to intimidate me. Every muscled in my body stiffened. Her presence was overwhelming and I suddenly knew that I couldn't win a fair fight against her.

Too bad for my questions. I needed to take her out now while I still had the element of surprise.

As swift as a snake, I raised both of my arms and a huge spike of earth rose obliquely from the ground at my feet and flew off at high speed toward my target.

In an instant, Zapp had somersaulted over the spike, generated lightning at her fingertips by circling her arms swiftly while in mid-air, landed steadily on the ground and shot her lightning at me. Almost at me. As the lightning passed right beside me, I felt some of its electricity surged through my body. I stood still, paralyzed both by the shock and my awe. She had missed on purpose.

"If you intend to fight, fine," she said, amused. "But let me ask you this before: Can you move faster than lightning?"


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**  
 _Defeated_

"When the enemy is stronger than you, flee. If you can't, focus on your defense until you've found a weakness to exploit. Everyone has a weakness. You just need to take your time to find it." With every bit of attention on my opponent, I held out to those words, once pronounced by my master. While wise and correct, there was a flaw in that strategy, for it relied on the fact that I would be able to defend long enough to find a weakness in the living weapon facing me.

Behind me, Hikari was ready to either charge at full speed or flee like the wind depending of what would happen next. Mayvin, true to himself, was watching the scene with his arms crossed on his chest, unconcerned about what may happen. I was about to make the first move when Zapp suddenly rose both of her arms in the air to signal her pacifism.

"There is no need for bloodshed," she then proclaimed in a clear and loud voice. "I have no desire to fight any of you."

Somehow, I knew that I should have been relieved to hear those words and that I should have welcomed them. But pride or stupidity or both took control of my mouth.

"What you desire is of no concern to me. I have come here to make you pay and I won't leave before I've done just that."

Ignoring me, Zapp turned toward Mayvin, who looked back at her without flinching.

"Where's Jek?" she asked him in a voice that sounded genuinely worried. "If his prisoner is here, then does that mean...?"

"Yes," simply replied Mayvin. "Dead."

"Well that's not good," said the firebender, bringing her thumb to her lip to chew on its nail. Then she looked back at me and I felt the burning intensity of her glare again. "So what is it gonna be?" she asked impatiently. "Because of what you did, I have things to do now, so if you're gonna fight, do it now."

Infuriated by how low she thought of me, I prepared to raise a dust cloud around us to blind her, but stopped when I noticed a little girl of no more than seven years old coming from behind Zapp.

"Zera! Zera!" she cried in her high-pitched, flustered voice. "She's almost... almost..."

After giving me no more than a quick glance, the firebender turned her back to me and kneeled to meet the small girl.

"You have to come," she continued. "She wants to see you before..."

"Let's go," Zapp said gravely as she lifted the girl in her arms and started running away from us.

Utterly confused, I stood still as my opponent was getting away, without knowing what to think of this situation. From what I understood, someone was about to die, or at least to go away, and Zapp, who must have been known as Zera around here, was close to her. But what connections could an Imperial agent have with a small village like this one.

Looking for answers, I decided to scan the village once more. As I did, I first noticed nothing more than I had when I arrived. But then something stroke me when I focused on the people hiding in their houses. There were no grownups. The oldest of them were no more than young adults, and most of them were maimed to some extent.

"It's a slave refugee village..." I muttered in confusion.

A long time ago, when I had only just begin my life as slave, I've wondered why the people who were acting as the Spares' leaders, Spade and Needle, were barely older than me. But then I realized that when a Spare reached the age of twenty, they were taken somewhere, never to return. Spade once told me that it was because adults were far less easy to keep under control, so they had to send them somewhere else. He doubted they killed them, for the new children they kept bringing had to come from somewhere.

"I need answers," I decided as I went after Zapp and the girl.

Their path led me to the biggest house of the village. Inside, a whole bunch of bed were filling the entire space, all empty save for one, around which folks were gathering. A teenage girl was lying on it, shaking terribly and breathing heavily.

When I reached the front door, Zapp was already at the sick girl's side, holding her hand and whispering words to her ear. As I was about to enter, two boys seemingly younger than me came out and blocked my way. One of them, the smaller one, was standing slightly behind the other, who stood with confidence before me.

"If you still have business with Zera, it will have to wait," he said firmly in a still maturing voice.

"Or what?" I replied disdainfully, fully aware that a boy of this age would easily bite to provocation. My thoughts were quickly confirmed when the boy unsheathed the sword at his waist.

"Or you'll have a taste of this blade." His words were confident, but I could sense his heart beating at an incredible pace. Behind him the other boy took out a big knife while behind me people from other houses had started to emerge and approach. I had no time to deal with all of them.

Without warning, I moved some fingers and a layer of hard rock rose from the ground to my arms, armoring them like gauntlets.

"Out of my way," I said very calmly to the boy. In many situations, a cold and imperious behavior could be way more intimidating than to shout threats like a beast. However, as soon as the boy took a step back, panicking, I knew that I had made a mistake. I quickly raised my guard as the boy charged towards me, eyes closed and screaming his lungs out.

"Anvil?" suddenly asked a voice from the crowd behind me. My body froze. It was a voice I had known for years.

"Chisel?" I asked back, as the cold metal of the boy's blade penetrated my chest.

I collapsed.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**  
 _Sintara Skysong_

 _(Sorry for the wait)_

My name is Sintara Skysong, son of Kentara Skyborn and Sola Birdsong, and I am the Avatar. Fifty years ago, I brought balance to the world by unifying it as one unique nation ruled by myself, thus creating the Empire. Alas, conquering the world was not something which could be done without hardships – without sacrifices, and soon many begun to hold me responsible for the permanent scars that my conquest had inflicted to the world. What they did not know was that a far grimmer fate would have befallen them if it wasn't for me.

I paid them no heed at first, as I knew that blaming them for their ignorance would be like blaming a blind man for being unable to read a book. In fact, only a few at that time, and even less today, knew of the true extent of what was about to happen back then. Every nation was at war against every other nations, each of them armed with mass destruction and secret weapons. A single spark could have had destroy the entirety of mankind.

Except that that spark fell on the wrong spot. When my family died, the small spark transformed into a flame so strong that it left no air for the others to burn. That flame, me, consumed everything and anything in its way, leaving only burning scars behind it until nothing was left to burn. The battle was long and hard-fought, and many deserts and wastelands begun to appear on the world map, but peace was at last once again victorious. From its ashes, the world rebuilt itself, starting with Imperial City, built on the remnants of the late New Republic City.

But the sense of fulfillment I had been feeling did not last long. All around the world, every man who had lost a brother, every mother who had lost a child, every orphan who had lost a family, they all looked at me. They looked at me and they hated me. They cursed me. Tyrant, they called me. Monster.

Soon, rebel factions started to emerge. Some amateurish, some consisting of a few street punks, some highly organized. All of them wanting me dead. For a long time I let them play this little warfare game of theirs, but it had to end. So I came out with a clear purpose. Complete annihilation. And it begun with the biggest and strongest faction, the Resistance.

* * *

With my army behind me, I stepped forward toward the fortress before me and waited. The structure was impressive. The walls were incredibly high and made of platinum – which had been stolen from my reserves. On top of them, a large number of archers and benders were looking down on me with conceited demeanor. I didn't think they had realized that, despite their big walls, I could have killed them without having to take another step. Some were experienced warriors, but most of them were youngsters barely out of their boyhood. I felt sorry for them, but I didn't pity them. They had made their choice and so had I.

After a minute or so, the great gate of the walls slightly opened and a little fat man came out of the fortress. He looked old and weary and tired, but still managed to walk all the way to face me. Heavily, he took a long breath and begun talking in a hoarse voice.

"My name is Grimgar the Rock, Father of the Resistance," he introduced himself.

Impressed by his courage to stand before me alone, I had begun to introduce myself in return, but he interrupted me on the spot.

"I know who you are. You are the Tyrant. The One Who Cannot Die. The One We Must Kill."

"Mind your tone, rebel," I said, closing the distance between us and looking down at him. "I am the Avatar. Ruler of this realm. Keeper of balance and peace."

"Ah, yes, the Avatar," he replied in a mockingly. "My grandfather told me that you once used to spread kindness with this name. He told me he saw you doing wonders as a kid when he was a young man himself. And yet now he rests in peace after dying from old age while you, on the other hand, still look younger than my own son! If this isn't the work of the devil, then what is?"

"Conflict is," I replied. "And as long as this fortress stands, conflict will continue to exist on this realm. On my realm."

Arrogantly, the little man snorted and spat at my feet. "Conflict will never cease to exist. As long as two different opinions exist, conflict will too. And I'm afraid that there is as many opinions as there are people. Are you planning on wiping out all of mankind simply because it does not share your view on the world? Is that your idea of balance, Avatar?"

"Mankind does not have to share my opinion. Only to respect it. If everyone would just do that, peace would be so easy to obtain."

"You fool. The best thing about opinions is that we can object it! Debate about it! Then, we can learn from this conflict and use the best of both side to evolve. That is the true strength of mankind. If you start dismissing others' opinions, then you will never grow. You will never progress!"

"Grimgar the Rock. In another era, perhaps, you could have been a great man. But you do not know what I know. You do not have seen what I have seen. Those ideals of yours, they were once the reality of our society. But that reality failed. War is the only thing that came with it. And it has come once again because of it."

Surprisingly, Grimgar lowered his head and sighed. "Tell me Avatar," he then said in a low voice, full of pity. "What must have you gone through during all those years of your long life that made you lost so much faith in humanity?"

Swiftly, I raised my right hand and twisted my spun my wrist. At the same time, his head suddenly rotated way more than it normally could, breaking his neck faster than he could realize it. Dead, the fat man fell heavily on the ground.

"You are way out of your bounds, little man." I turned and walked away, back to my army, which opened a path for me. On the walls, someone shouted and a rain of arrow and rocks went up in the sky before falling back on us. Without turning back, I raised my arm to bend the rocks and the arrows' metal, stopping every single one of them in midair and then let them fall on the ground without a single one of them reaching me or one of my men. "Get them," I said wearily to my troops. In a roar, three thousand elite warriors charged the fortress, which suddenly didn't seem as mighty as before.

As I walked away to let my men do the work, my General came to me with an overly exaggerated salute.

"My Lord! I have a report that another rebel faction is on its way to aid the Resistance. They will arrive directly from behind our army. I have taken the liberty of gathering three hundred men to intercept them before they can surround us."

His name was Joeffrey Yaolang, an excellent warrior and tactician with incredible leadership as well as a veteran. He was also planning to assassinate me in the mist of the action. I pertinently knew that he was the one who organized the coming of this new faction. I didn't think he had anything against me personally. He just wanted to be acclaimed as the hero who took down the Tyrant, which would probably grant him the support to become the new Emperor. Too bad for him that I wasn't ready to pass the torch yet.

"Thank you Joeffrey, but I have other plans. I need you at the vanguard. I will take those men you gathered and lead them myself. In fact I won't. I'll do it myself."

Taken by surprise, he lost his composure and his salute became lousy. "But... my Lord, my place isn't..."

"Your place is where I want you to be, General," I cut him. "Or are you doubting my judgment?"

"No, my Lord, I could never..."

"Then get going," I said to him in voice that suggested a warning rather than an order. Red of either embarrassment or anger or both, he quickly went away. I looked him go, wondering if he'd die today. A General at the vanguard would become a primary target for the enemy, for killing him would bring their moral up and demoralize our troops, not to mention the fame it would bring to the man who would achieve it. I thought about his wife and son, but quickly chased them out of my mind. I was not responsible for the man's foolish ambitions.

Dismissing the man from my thoughts, I extended my seismic sense to the east, where the new rebels were supposed to come from. Nothing I couldn't handle. Without hurry, I called two men to get my steel armor off to reduce my weight and took off in the sky. More than a hundred years after I first discovered it, the feeling of being able to freely roam the sky was still exhilarating. It was the only time I felt like true freedom was within my reach. If I would ever get to live without having to care for anything, I'd probably spend the rest of my days sharing the sky with the birds. But I knew better than everyone else that those days would never come.

As I glided through the air, I remembered some fragments of my childhood. Winged engines soaring the sky like metal birds. Biplanes I think they were called. Now, like most of that time's technology, they were gone. Even when I was a kid only a few of them were left. Mankind had been destroying the world way before my time.

I felt the disturbance in the air caused by the moving mass before I could actually see the troops. I waited. It would be dealt with quickly.

They were around a hundred men on foot, poorly equipped. The steel of their blades was rusty and the best body protection they had was leather. Not that better equipment would have helped them.

Patiently, I waited for them to be right underneath me and then dived. Free falling, I felt the power of the air on my skin as the attraction of the earth pulled me faster and faster towards the rebels who had begun to notice something coming from the sky. Unfortunately for them, they would never understand what had befallen them.

Like a meteor, I crashed right in the middle of the troops. On impact, a massive shockwave amplified by my earthbending made the earth quake. Like shattered glass, it rose, crumbled and split in a radius large enough to engulf all of the rebels and even more.

After the earth stopped shaking, my seismic sense confirmed me that all of them, save for one, were already dead. I earthbent the dust raised by the quake to condense it into a small compact rock, giving me some visibility, and then went to the last breathing man. His right arm crushed by a big round rock and his left lung pierced by a sharp one, he was desperately trying to stay conscious despite choking with his own blood.

"I'm sorry," I said as I crouched beside him. "It was supposed to be a quick death."

His eyes opened in small slits and he looked at me with green irises tainted with fear. "What... what are you?" he asked between two coughs.

"What am I?" I asked back as I put my hand on his heart. "Nothing more than a puny human who happened to be born with more power than you..." On those words, I stopped his blood from flowing through his heart. The man dead, I looked up to the sky of billion blues. "I wish I didn't. But I've come too far. Without me to hold it together, the world would collapse. I've come so far. I might as well see this through the end, whatever end it might be. May the ending come, my work will be done."

* * *

"Lay him there!"

"... healers, quick!"

"Who... you?"

"... with him. Move aside... save him."

"... in there, Anvy. Stay... me..."

"You'll be alright."


End file.
